Josefin Arnell
visual artits (SE), website
- Gag reflex / I wanna puke in heaven
In the video, two girls and a boy are using laughing as a way to produce endorfines - the bodys feel good chemical, in that way they trick the body to feel good about something that actually is harmful -puking up on demand. This can be compared with similar feelings of Euphoria when someone have bulimia or practicing other kind of self sabotage. The video is also ofcourse a reaction from feeling nauseous from the world. A nonstop cleansing, getting rid of the sickness ....
video, 2016, 10 minShown at L&F knalfuif (07–07–2017)
- everything floats on with small abstract breaks,
Mothers of Lost & Found are nervous but yet excited. Geo has banned their usually hosting task of giving the audience a feeling of safety with their presentation talks. I see Julia and Alma later sitting across the room, alert looking around wonder if everything is going as planned.
It´s different then other Lost & Found nights, everything floats on with small abstract breaks, in-between transformations of recorded noise and a very special organ that only very professional musicians are aloud to play on. off><zz is mastering it´s sound, rumbling and dark, massive like a freighting film and gives the dark space a total atmosphere of spookiness. It plays on and off when ever it wants, on top of other performances, in between and a little bit here and there, like special effects it interrupts, accomplish.
A Dracula child stares on confused faces when trying to find the perfect spot to sit. It´s hard for the audience to decide, cos chairs are spread out through the room one by one. We understand that performances gonna happen on different spots in the space. Geo walking a bit around in his special performance glasses checking things. Turns out Margaret and I sit in the way for Sam Keogh´s fashion walk, when we get the spotlights flashes right in our eyes.
Written for L&F Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ (02–09–2016)
- Blue Paint Makes Your Kidneys Bleed
Outside the Kleine Zaal RJJ and JA is about the perform, they stand naked and facing each other on the ‘stucco runner’ (turns out it's satin sheets) and subsequently start dipping their hands in that white bucket. They rub each other with a baby pink paint and then arbitrarily start making body prints on the surface they stand on. Some people leave. Some others break some more glasses. DJ, Nikola Knezevic, is playing a remix of ‘Touch My Body’ by Mariah Carey. At the end of RJJ gets a satin sheet and presses it on the JA that is lying face up on the floor. JA does the same to RJJ in return and the performance ends. After they come back dressed I take a peak of these sheets while RJJ collects them from the performance site. I don't know what I expected in the first place but as soon as I see the outlines of their bodies on these sheets I feel the need to catch my breath; they look so defined yet so ghost-like, I think of dry-pressed flowers.
Together with Richard John Jones and Nikola Knežević.
Performance, 2015, 20 min
- Film about her mother
I come to like Josefin Arnell's work in waves. After she presents a project (amongst other things) about her mother who is ill and her desire to take her to a healer I think the metaphorical search here is more valuable than actually going to the healer, which I guess is some sort of placebo effect through intention. All it takes for me to get touched is her just wording this thought alone, it seems, because she seems shy and sweet and I like my mom as well. Also in her presentation: her ‘Pussy Chain vs Iceberg’ fragment is brilliant: pussy chain is three girls connected through their ‘pussies’, and there is some sort of dialogue between that ‘entity’ and an unspecified iceberg. It's imaginative, sprawling work with all the horseplay, and the bullying, and her mom and her ‘blondest person on earth’ friend who she displays so lovingly. It is sweet and dense like condensed milk; I'm immobile in a harsh but genuine world that is also sometimes kind.
Video, work in progress, 10 min
See Jan Hoek's article about Josefin's presentation in Vice.